


Wath a Thoulmate?

by KittenKin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22305265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittenKin/pseuds/KittenKin
Summary: Based on this post by i-need-you-buddy of tumblr:Rosie asking Sherlock what is soul mate? Sherlock doing soul mate speech. when he finishes. John outside the door and drops his shopping cause he knows that Sherlock was talking about them. How john discovers Sherlock is in love with him. (https://i-need-you-buddy.tumblr.com/post/184615579201)
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 231





	1. Chapter 1

“Wath a thoulmate?”

Sherlock blinked and quickly shook himself out of research mode. The shoulders came down, eyes tracked automatically to the source of the sweet little query, and he tromped down hard on his usual processing speed. He’d found that both John and Rosie appreciated simple attention far more than attention to detail, and so he’d gladly given up his greedy data-gathering of these two most important people in favor of being able to make them happy.

“A soulmate?” he asked, not needing the confirmation per se, but helpless to draw out these little interactions each and every time. She went to John for all her emotional wants - a choice that Sherlock supported but John privately expressed doubts over - and the doctor saw to every owwie and complaint and sudden burning need, but when her curiosity needed sating, she came to Sherlock.

“Mm-hm.” A finger, still plump with the last lingering traces of baby fat, hovered close to the laptop screen but didn’t make contact. Sherlock regretted the missed opportunity to lift more prints for his scrapbook, and what was more, felt a pang that she hadn’t answered fully and given him more mental recordings of that charming little lisp.

It was a temporary thing, only owing to the loss of her central incisors, but still he couldn’t help being utterly charmed by it and secretly - almost a secret even to himself, every occurrence of the thrill and thought ruthlessly quashed - pretending it was an inherited trait, as if she were his daughter by blood and not just in trust and love and official place of residence.

Sherlock set the laptop down on the coffee table and patted the bit of couch next to him, buying some time. He knew the widely accepted definition of soulmates, of course, but the dry text would hardly satisfy her, and he needed a moment in which to formulate a simple but satisfying way of explaining the concept to a five year old. A keen, intelligent one, but a five year old nonetheless.

“Well, Watson,” he began, once she’d settled herself next to him, hands clasped and wide eyes fixed on his own. “You see that you live with your dad and me, and that John and I do a lot of the same things with you? We have both made you breakfast and walked you to school and taken you to see Doctor Wilson when you weren’t feeling well.”

“You’re better at breakfath.”

“Thank you, Watson.” Sherlock gave her as good a bow of thanks as he could while seated on the couch in his dressing gown. “But you know that only one of us is your father, and that it is not something you can choose. It was decided for you when you were born, and there’s nothing you can do to change it, but you wouldn’t anyway even if you could, because you love your dad ever so much.”

“Yeth.” An enthusiastic but serious series of nods set Rosie’s pigtails bobbing.

“Soulmates are like that. You only have one, and you have them all your life. They’re like a best friend who will always be your best friend no matter how near or far away you are from them.”

_(Two years, three continents, two hundred six bones in the body and sometimes he’d thought he’d broken them all.)_

“Even when you’ve just met your soulmate, you feel like you’ve known each other all your life. Even if you don’t know all the little details yet, like their favorite color, you know what kind of person they are.”

_(Wanna see some more? Oh God yes.)_

“A soulmate changes you. But not like a catalyst or reagent; he gets inside of your heart and makes you new. You want to be a better person; brighter, faster, stronger, just to see him smile. You endure pain for him you would’ve buckled under when you were alone. You push yourself further for his sake than you ever could have for your own, or anyone else’s. And no matter how much pain you feel or effort you have to expend, it’s worth it, because you love him so much that giving him anything but your very best would be…just impossible.”

The impassioned speech - and just when he’d gotten so worked up, Sherlock couldn’t recall - trailed off and a weighty silence fell. Rosie still gazed steadily up at him, her age the only thing making this solemnity unusual. After a few breaths, she piped up again.

“Dad is your thoulmate?”

The next breath in stuttered, and Sherlock nearly choked on an errant bit of saliva at Rosie’s innocent question. There was a panicky flutter of blinks and rewound thoughts, and the detective regretted leading off with an example of John versus Sherlock and slipping from “them” to “him” in his descriptions.

“I…um…” he stammered, at a loss for an answer because he couldn’t be honest, but then again he’d promised himself never to lie to this little morsel of humanity given to him to help raise.

John was out doing the shopping, and he’d mentioned needing to stop by a jeweler’s to get his watch looked at on the way back. Sherlock and Rosie were alone in the flat; surely this little - titanic - secret was safe to let out. It was unlikely that Rosie would retain or regurgitate it, and even if she did, there’d likely be a way to pass it off as a misunderstanding or a product of her imagination.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, almost before he was aware of having made the decision to answer her truthfully. “Yes, your father is my soulmate. But Watson, listen…”

She was off again before he could add a caution about soulmates not always forming a perfect reciprocal bond, however.

“And you’re Dad'th?”

“Yeah,” John said from the doorway, hoarse but perfectly recognizable, making Sherlock freeze so suddenly and absolutely that it was a wonder his ribs didn’t all pop off his spine from the sudden tension. Rosie perked up and looked over to her father with a brilliant smile and cheerfully chirped greeting. Sherlock, in the meantime, turned at a glacial pace, lungs immobile from shock and heart leaping from a joy that the brain wasn’t quite sure it dared to believe in yet.

“Yeah, he is.”


	2. Chapter 2

The trick to successfully hiding something from Sherlock was to tuck it behind two other items. He would observe the surface item, deduce the hidden item easily, and would think so little of John’s ability to be crafty and duplicitous that it simply wouldn’t occur to the detective to do any further detecting.

John didn’t bother trying to win a battle of wits against that great brain. That was doomed to failure. The very idea was laughable. But a military maneuver; he had the greater experience with those, and therefore a chance at success.

He knew his opponent’s strengths and his own weaknesses. Sherlock picked up on changes in John’s behavior like a pig catching a whiff of truffles, and John was no great shakes at dissembling. And so John didn’t even let himself think of his plan, much less work on it, in Sherlock’s presence. If he thought of it late at night or early in the morning, Sherlock would probably see traces of it in the way he buttoned his shirt or some nonsense as well. And so all strategizing took place during his lunch breaks at the clinic, and John determinedly pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind by the time he started for home.

Any errant thoughts that popped up now and again were batted away with a firm, “nope, later”, and no time was allowed for any hints of nervousness, determination, or thoughtfulness to rise to the surface of his expression or body language.

It worked like a charm. For the first time in his association with the genius, John managed to keep something a secret. The plan itself, too, went off without a hitch.

The thing about hiding something from Sherlock was that the decoys had to be absolutely solid themselves. Sherlock would see through a decoy if it was just that; a decoy. So when John realized that he couldn’t hide a trip to the jeweler’s, even if he slipped it in on the way home from doing the shopping, he had to come up with a valid other reason to go to the jeweler’s. Earrings for Mrs. Hudson wasn’t a bad idea, save that Christmas and her birthday were too many calendar pages away for John to bear, and there was the possibility, too, that Sherlock would actually want to come along. He’d probably say something about it being because John’s taste wasn’t to be trusted with such a delicate errand, but really their landlady was like a mother to the detective; simple affection would be the real motivation.

So no to the earrings. John then thought about buying a little charm for Rosie. That was a task more personally suited to him, the father. But he dashed the idea even more quickly; given what he hoped he and Sherlock would become - what they all three would become together - excluding Sherlock from such an errand would hardly be the most auspicious or appropriate way to start things off.

Fate intervened in a most acceptable way. A pin in John’s watchband began to loosen, and Sherlock was - of course - the one to point it out. John blinked at his wrist, honestly surprised, and after tossing out a quick word of thanks, spent a moment painstakingly working it back into place with his thumbnail. Internally, he focused fiercely on not thinking with glee about how this was the perfect excuse to visit a jeweler’s. Thankfully, Rosie was already on hand to distract Sherlock at this critical moment by begging for her usual bedtime concert. Sherlock had unintentionally trained her as an infant to drift off quietly to Brahms, and now she never went smilingly to bed unless accompanied by her favorite violinist.

They’d attempted to substitute classical music CDs and even recordings of Sherlock himself playing, but as an infant Rosie had fought sleep and cried crankily over anything less than an in-person performance, and unless there was a case on, Rosie the preschooler brought out some rather impressive sulks if denied her usual lullabies. Sherlock had grumped and grumbled occasionally but had always carried his violin upstairs once the baby was settled in her cot, and had commented once or twice on her impeccable taste when John had ventured to apologize for having such a demanding daughter. It had been during one of those mini-concerts, in fact, Rosie smiling sleepily, Sherlock playing softly in the dim light of the upstairs bedroom, and John gazing adoringly at them both from the doorway, that John had decided to buy rings.

Thin, plain, and titanium, chosen right out of the display and bought straight from the storeroom. Nothing too expensive in case they needed to be replaced, and no adornments or engravings that could get caught on anything as they ran all over and under London. John bought a chain as well, hoping that he could at least persuade Sherlock to wear it as a pendant, even if he didn’t want such a brand of sentiment as a ring. His own could go on the chain that held his dog tags if secrecy was one of Sherlock’s conditions, though he’d prefer to wear it on his hand and declare to all the world that he belonged to someone.

John wanted to propose, to at least propose that Sherlock consider it. Them. But he’d settle for acknowledgement that Sherlock was his soulmate. A wedding ring on the finger would be all of his dreams come true. A token of soulmateship worn around the neck would be nearly as satisfying. And if nothing else, he at least wanted Sherlock to keep the ring somewhere. On a shelf, tossed into his sock drawer; it hardly mattered where. He just needed the truth put out there, acknowledged and accepted.

John loved Sherlock.

Anticipation mounted, as did nerves, but John didn’t let himself oscillate on the pavement. He strode straight to the door, went right in, and only allowed himself two seconds to make sure the velvet box was still in his jacket pocket before he began climbing the stairs. A smile broke out over his face as he caught the sound of beloved voices, and he slowed his steps unthinkingly, not wanting to lose any syllables to the creak of a loose step.


End file.
